The Tower of London is the oldest palace, fortress, and
prison in Europe. William the Conqueror built the fortress on the site
of an earlier Roman fort constructed during the reign of Claudius. Traces
of the Roman wall can be seen on the grounds. The Tower of London consisted
of two lines of defensive walls enclosing the great White Tower. The medieval
kings of England lived with their families and their court in the White
Tower.

A number of famous Tudor prisoners were confined to the
various thirteen towers on the inner wall, including Thomas More, Sir Walter
Raleigh, and even the young Elizabeth I. Henry VI died in the Wakefield
Tower in 1471, supposedly murdered on the orders of the Duke of Gloucester,
later Richard III. The most notorious murders, however, were those of the
young King Edward V and his brother Richard, Duke of York, who were reputedly
killed in the Garder Tower (now known as the Bloody Tower), again on the
orders of the Duke of Gloucester, in 1483.

Between the Chapel Royal and Tower Green is a small paved
area where scaffolds were erected for the beheading of those individuals
whose public execution on Tower Hill might have incited riots. Anne Boleyn,
Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, were
all executed on this spot. The tower is the setting for much of Shakespeare’s
Richard III.